W. (2008) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A chronicle of the life and presidency of George W. Bush . Director: a list of 38 titles created 22 Aug 2011 a list of 22 titles created 20 Nov 2011 a list of 25 titles created 01 Oct 2012 a list of 25 titles created 02 Jan 2015 a list of 36 titles created 7 months ago Search for " W. " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 1 win & 7 nominations. See more awards » Videos A biographical story of former U.S. president Richard Milhous Nixon, from his days as a young boy to his eventual presidency which ended in shame.

Director: Oliver Stone Now out of prison but still disgraced by his peers, Gordon Gekko works his future son-in-law, an idealistic stock broker, when he sees an opportunity to take down a Wall Street enemy and rebuild his empire. Director: Oliver Stone A New Orleans DA discovers there's more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story. Director: Oliver Stone Two Port Authority police officers become trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center. Director: Oliver Stone A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider who takes the youth under his wing. Director: Oliver Stone The biography of Ron Kovic. Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for. Director: Oliver Stone An American photojournalist gets caught in a political struggle at El Salvador in 1980. Director: Oliver Stone The final movie in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy follows the true story of a Vietnamese village girl who survives a life of suffering and hardship during and after the Vietnam war. As a ...

See full summary » Director: Oliver Stone 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.2/10 X The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band The Doors and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison , from his days as a UCLA film student in Los Angeles, to his untimely death in Paris, France at age 27 in 1971. Director: Oliver Stone A rude, contemptuous talk show host becomes overwhelmed by the hatred that surrounds his program just before it goes national. Director: Oliver Stone Edit Storyline Oliver Stone's biographical take on the life of George W. Bush, one of the most controversial presidents in USA history, chronicling from his wild and carefree days in college, to his military service, to his governorship of Texas and role in the oil business, his 2000 candidacy for president, his first turbulent four years, and his 2004 re-election campaign.

Written by Anonymous Biography | Drama | History Motion Picture Rating ( MPAA ) Rated PG-13 for language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 17 October 2008 (USA) See more » Also Known As: $10,505,668 (USA) (17 October 2008) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia Admiral Deb Loewer , who was on President Bush's detail the morning of 9/11, was the film's technical advisor. See more » Goofs Cheney says "Atta met Saddam's intel chief in Czechoslovakia." Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, ten years earlier. See more » Quotes White House Reporter, John : Mr President. After 9/11 what would you say your biggest mistakes would be and what lessons have you learned from them? George W. Bush : Um... uh... Now, I wish you would have given me this written question beforehand, John, so I... So I could prepare for it. Well... You know, I... I just, uh... uh...

John, I'm sure historians will say, "Gosh," you know. "I wish he could have done better." You know, this way or that way, uh... I... Yeah... I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of the press ... [...] See more » Crazy Credits At the very end of the credits, you see a Christian cross with a period. It morphs into the W-period logo of the movie. See more » Connections (New Jersey, USA) – See all my reviews With his "in the moment" biopic "W." the normally volatile Oliver Stone wisely saves his judgments for history when hindsight will be 20/20. Achingly subdued and slightly satirical, Stone plays it straight and to the bone. Here he presents us with the early years of our current lame duck president, showing Dubya rushing a frat-house at Yale, meeting Laura at a barbecue, living in the shadow of his father and brother, his troubles holding down a job, his failed bid to become baseball commissioner, and his defining moment when he gives up drinking and becomes born-again.

All of which leads us to his first term and the Iraq War quagmire, where Dubya honest-to-goodness truly believes "God" wanted him to become president and that Iraq did have those rascally WMD. In the lead role, Josh Brolin is an endearingly bumble-headed Dubya, and Stone presents him as a simple-minded man with good intentions who has been crippled by his "daddy issues" and has surrounded himself with the most cynical, self-serving, and corrupt administration in modern American history. The supporting cast is a hoot, with highlights including Thandie Newton eliciting big laughs just with her facial expressions as a wicked and moronically faithful Condi Rice, Elizabeth Banks giving a winning portrayal of Laura Bush, and Richard Dreyfuss playing Cheney as the most insipid megalomaniac American politics has ever seen. Stone accomplishes three major coups here that should surprise those who expected a one-sided liberal smear job. First, he humanizes George W. Bush. The director does this with savvy editing showing the back-story of why Dubya does the things he does (i.e.

why he uses nicknames for everyone or why running three miles every day is so important to him), and then juxtaposing that with the inane decisions he has made as president. By utilizing actual transcripts from press conferences, news coverage, and meetings, Stone and scribe Stanley Weiser allow Bush and his administration to speak for themselves, and it's both comically cathartic and occasionally frightening to see it dramatized so well. Second, he redeems the presidency of George "Poppy" Bush (a somewhat miscast but still effective James Cromwell) by showing what a restrained and thoughtful Commander in Chief he was compared to his naive and too-eager-to-please son. Thirdly, he redeems the legacy of Colin Powell (a surprisingly good Jeffrey Wright), who is shown here as the only person in the administration with any hindsight or foresight, and the only sane voice who questioned the motives for entering Iraq, though he eventually caved in and played along. His "f-you" to Cheney towards the film's final act is priceless.

As the actual presidency still has a few months to go at the time of the film's release, Stone's biopic was never written a true ending, leaving us with a symbolic image of Dubya looking up to the sky in center field waiting to catch a ball that will never drop. It may be another twenty years before we can pass any accurate judgment on Dubya's legacy, and likewise, Stone's film will have to wait. It's going to be a long time before anyone catches all those balls George W. Bush's administration threw up in the air. 170 of 284 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes W. Movie Review & Film Summary (2008) | Roger Ebert Tweet Oliver Stone 's "W.," a biography of President Bush, is fascinating. No other word for it. I became absorbed in its story of a poor little rich kid's alcoholic youth and torturous adulthood. This is the tragedy of a victim of the Peter Principle. Wounded by his father's disapproval and preference for his brother Jeb, the movie argues, George W. Bush rose and rose until he was finally powerful enough to stain his family's legacy.

Advertisement Unlike Stone's " JFK " and " Nixon ," this film contains no revisionist history. Everything in it, including the scenes behind closed doors, is now pretty much familiar from tell-all books by former Bush aides, and reporting by such reporters as Bob Woodward. Though Stone and his writer, Stanley Weiser , could obviously not know exactly who said what and when, there's not a line of dialogue that sounds like malicious fiction. It's all pretty much as published accounts have prepared us for. The focus is always on Bush ( Josh Brolin ): His personality, his addiction, his insecurities, his unwavering faith in a mission from God, his yearning to prove himself, his inability to deal with those who advised him. Not surprisingly, in this film, most of the crucial decisions of his presidency were shaped and placed in his hands by the Machiavellian strategist Dick Cheney ( Richard Dreyfuss ) and the master politician Karl Rove ( Toby Jones ). Donald Rumsfeld ( Scott Glenn ) runs an exasperated third. But what made them tick? And what about Colin Powell ( Jeffrey Wright ) and Condoleezza Rice ( Thandie Newton )? You won't find out here.

The film sees Bush's insiders from the outside. In his presence, they tend to defer, to use tact as a shield from his ego and defensiveness. But Cheney's soft-spoken, absolutely confident opinions are generally taken as truth. And Bush accepts Rove as the man to teach him what to say and how to say it. He needs them and doesn't cross them. Advertisement In the world according to "W.," Bush always fell short in the eyes of his patrician father ( James Cromwell ) and outspoken mother ( Ellen Burstyn ). He resented his parents' greater admiration for his younger brother Jeb. The film lacks scenes showing W. as a child, however -- probably wisely. It opens at a drunken fraternity initiation, and " Junior " is pretty much drunk until he finds Jesus at the age of 40. He runs through women, jobs and cars at an alarming speed, and receives one angry lecture after another from his dad. While running for Congress for the first time, he meets pretty Laura ( Elizabeth Banks ) at a party, and love blossoms. She was a Gene McCarthy volunteer. Did she turn conservative? I imagine so, but the movie doesn't show them discussing politics.

She is patient, steadfast, loving, supportive and a prime candidate for Alanon, the 12-step program for spouses of alcoholics. After Bush quits cold turkey, the movie shows him nevertheless often with a beer at his hand, unaware of the ironic AA curse for someone you dislike: "One little drink won't kill you." [In an interview conducted after this review was posted online, Oliver Stone told me that Bush was not drinking real beer in the later scenes, but the non-alcoholic O'Doul's.] Dried out, Bush is finally able to hold down jobs. The movie is far from a chronological record, organizing episodes to observe the development of his personality, not his career. Even several spellbinding scenes about the runup to the Iraq war are not so much critical of his decisions as about how cluelessly, and yet with such vehemence, he stuck with them through thick and thin. At a top-level meeting where he is finally informed that there are no WMDs in Iraq and apparently never were, he is furious for not being informed of this earlier. Several people in the room tried to inform him, but were silenced. Colin Powell spends a lot of time softly urging caution and holding his tongue.

There is no indication that he will eventually resign. Advertisement The movie's Bush is exasperating to work with. At his Texas ranch, he takes the inner circle on a march through the blazing sun, misses a turn and assures them it's only a half-mile back. Cheney, after three heart attacks, and Rice, wearing inappropriate shoes, straggle along unhappily. His parents are apparently even more disturbed by his decision to run for governor of Texas than by his drinking. Cheney is lectured at a private lunch to remember who is president. He quietly forgets. Many of the actors somewhat resemble the people they play. The best is Dreyfuss as Cheney, who is not so much a double as an embodiment. The film's portrait of George Senior is sympathetic; it shows him giving Junior the cuff links that were "the only real thing" his own father, Sen. Prescott Bush, ever gave him. The name and the oedipal complex were passed down the family tree. One might feel sorry for George W. at the end of this film, were it not for his legacy of a fraudulent war and a collapsed economy.

The film portrays him as incompetent to be president, and shaped by the puppet masters Cheney and Rove to their own ends. If there is a saving grace, it may be that Bush will never fully realize how badly he did. How can he blame himself? He was only following God's will. Advertisement W Movie - the Oliver Stone George W Bush Movie - Wild About Movies W Movie – the Oliver Stone George W Bush Movie Release Date: October 17, 2008 “W” – Two-time Best Director Oscar winning movie director (“Platoon,” “Born on the Fourth Of July”) is due a third Oscar. No? Well, he’s trying hard with the movie “W,” a biopic in the tradition of his other Presidential biopics “Nixon” and “JFK.” However, with the release of “W” on October 17, 2008, Oliver Stone reaches a milestone. “W” is the first of his Presidential biopics that will be released not only when – at least one can hope? – the President portrayed is still alive, but who is also STILL IN OFFICE. The 2008 Presidential primaries are not until the first week of November.

So “W” will have been in movie theaters a full 3 weeks, to influence those who can’t think for themselves. The best thing about “W” is it is being released by the same motion picture studio, Lionsgate,” who also put out the biggest box office hit of all time, for a documentary; “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a scathing portrayal of the “W” administration’s first term. Starring: Josh BrolinToby JonesJeffrey WrightBruce McGillScott GlennThandie NewtonRichard DreyfussColin HanksDennis BoutsikarisWes Chatham Genres: BiographyDramaHistory ‎W. (2008) directed by Oliver Stone • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 2 Oliver Stone's film about George W. Bush paints an interesting picture of our 43rd president. Stone's not really known for subtlety, but he does seem to seek some sort of balance here, showing us W.'s likable side along with his flaws, and giving us some insight into the family issues that drove him. Josh Brolin does a remarkable job of sustaining that balance, and it's primarily his performance that holds our interest through the film.

Review by matt lynch ★★★ Fascinating for Stone in that it both lacks (mostly) simple empathy and yet (confoundingly for some) still refuses to paint Bush as actively malevolent as opposed to merely stupid. But I think the real problem here is that Stone reserves a special scorn for people who don't believe in anything, and that makes for a fundamental disconnect, something that didn't plague, say, NIXON, and it poisons everything here with smugness, especially in the dull laundry list of its subject's many famous gaffes but also in the depiction of Texas culture and Bush's fratboy personality as some rancid nightmaricana (tm) even while there's an attempt to get inside the man's crippling anxiety in the shadow of his father and family. Nice try but too timid on all fronts. Review by Keith LaFountaine ★★½ Behind every person there is a human. If you strip away the veneer of successes and failures, of public and personal perception, you get to the raw information and makeup of what makes a person act the way they do. Nobody is born inherently evil or good, or destined to do evil or good things.

Life is a buildup of choices that all culminate to the same eventuality. W. plays with this idea, though unsuccessfully. George W. Bush is certainly not loved by most Americans. Even conservatives seem to push away the memory of his presidency when possible. So to create a biopic - especially a rather neutral (or, the attempt at neutrality) one - during a time when his… 4 Could have been cartoon-y or too dark, but it succeeds in painting a picture of a regular, even likeable guy who gets in way over his head. Unfortunately, for him, way over his head is the presidency and two major wars without end. Well-acted, except for Condi, who is as sketch-comedy as actors in movies get. 2 To be honest, my interest in Oliver Stone waned somewhat post U-Turn. Any Given Sunday was good, but not great... I've yet to delve into the world of the dozens of alternate cuts of Alexander he's unleashed on the world, and World Trade Center...? Not really my cup of tea. So... it was with some reservation I popped this one on.

Was feeling in the mood for something political, and post-Trump's victory, it seemed the perfect time to check out Oliver Stone's take on the man who was misunderestimated... And - to my surprise - I was hooked. This is Stone at the top of his game. The politics are always fascinating and compelling, and the tale of Bush the Jr is told with both unabashed sentimentality and acerbic, razor-sharp wit. Brolin is perfect, it features a cast of thousands and the ending is quite possible the greatest ending to a political movie since Michael Ritchie's "The Candidate". Review by Luke McGowan ★★½ Whilst Josh Brolin is having a blast and James Cromwell is downright magnificent, the film is more concerned with Stones views on the Bush doctrine than the reality of what happened. And Thandie Newton, I love you and you look exactly like Condi Rice but what the hell are you doing? 2 To be honest, my interest in Oliver Stone waned somewhat post U-Turn. Any Given Sunday was good, but not great... I've yet to delve into the world of the dozens of alternate cuts of Alexander he's unleashed on the world, and World Trade Center...? Not really my cup of tea.

So... it was with some reservation I popped this one on. Was feeling in the mood for something political, and post-Trump's victory, it seemed the perfect time to check out Oliver Stone's take on the man who was misunderestimated... And - to my surprise - I was hooked. This is Stone at the top of his game. The politics are always fascinating and compelling, and the tale of Bush the Jr is told with both unabashed sentimentality and acerbic, razor-sharp wit. Brolin is perfect, it features a cast of thousands and the ending is quite possible the greatest ending to a political movie since Michael Ritchie's "The Candidate". Review by JC13 ★★★½ "This is my war, not his!" W. is a biopic about George W. Bush. Oliver Stone has proven that he does this sort of thing well, so i decided to check it out. While not nearly as good as his other two films that are named after U.S. Presidents, it's still pretty good. It was pretty interesting throughout and very well made. The cast is pretty solid across the board, with Josh Brolin turning in a strong performance in the lead role.

I'm not sure what the hell Thandie Newton was doing though. She was distractingly bad. Other than that I enjoyed this one. 7/10 3 The best part about W. are the scenes before Junior was president. Never knew the guy was a drunken party boy. Josh Brolin is great as George W. Bush and I'm glad he was in 99.5% of all the scenes. His downfall and his start was fun to see. But I think there may be one problem for me. I don't know much about politics in 'Merica. When Junior was president I was between the ages of 12 and 20. So, the only part I really knew that he wasn't the best with his decisions regarding the war. So it was very interesting to see all those. Of Course I don't know what is true about all of this but I don't think they made of loads of stuff. So, any tips for other films about American Presidents? Review by coffeekermit07 ★★½ This sat on my shelf for almost two years and somehow deep inside I knew all the time I would have a tough one with this flick when I'd finally watch it.

But the Trump-thing got me thinking so I put it in the player after all. So, a very well cast movie with the thesis of W. as a fairly likeable, but not-so-smart guy, who just did not know what to do with his life, and the peopl, who pushed him to become one of the most dissliked presidents of all time. Not to bad of a premise, I think. But like the Bush in the movie, the film itself does not know what it wants to be. If… Review by Eric Jackman ★★★★ Looks great - details are convincing. Well-cast and well-acted. It felt like maybe the father-son relationship was getting played up too much (especially the dream sequence). The scenes of him in center field also felt like Stone was trying to hard to make an artsy statement. Walks a fine line between making W. sympathetic and also terrifyingly dense. Review by Joe ★★★½ Heavy-handed, though for an Oliver Stone film it's almost understated. That said, there is a strange disconnect in the fil.m between those doing straight-line impressions of the real people, like Condi Rice, and those going more for the essence, like Bush At.

Still not awful and , if nothing else, reminded me of the whole Mission Accomplished nonsense. Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family - The New York Times The New York Times Movies |Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family Search Oliver Stone’s Vision Thing: Bush, the Family W. Photo "W." is Oliver Stone's latest presidential meditation featuring Richard Dreyfuss and Josh Brolin. Credit Sidney Ray Baldwin/Lionsgate The megamillion-dollar question that hovers over Oliver Stone ’s queasily enjoyable “W.,” his Oedipal story about the rise and fall, fall, fall of George W. Bush is: why? Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag — Josh Brolin plays the frat boy who would be king, while Richard Dreyfuss creeps around in a Dick Cheney sneer — alternately choking on pretzels and spleen, and reciting all the familiar lines and lies.

History is said to repeat itself as tragedy and farce, but here it registers as a full-blown burlesque. Mr. Stone’s take on the president, as comic as it is sincere, is bound to rile ax-grinders of every ideological stripe, particularly those who mistake fiction for nonfiction. History informs its narrative arc from Texas to Iraq, but it should go without saying that this is a work of imagination, a directorial riff on real people and places complete with emotion-tweaking music cues, slo-mo visuals and portentous symbolism. It says nothing new or insightful about the president, his triumphs and calamities. (As if anyone goes to an Oliver Stone movie for a reality check.) But it does something most journalism and even documentaries can’t or won’t do: it reminds us what a long, strange trip it’s been to the Bush White House. In “W.” that trip starts with the middle-aged Bush wearing the number 43 and standing on a baseball field in an otherwise empty stadium. When the off-screen announcer introduces him — “the 43rd president of the United States!” — he looks around for the crowd that isn’t there. It’s a potent image, and while Mr.

Stone overuses it, returning Bush to his, er, field of dreams once too often, it works to underscore the film’s ideas about life, political and otherwise, as a performance. In the story Bush burns through one job and identity after another — partying student, imperfect son, indifferent oilman, serial flirt, attentive husband, sports guy, born-again Christian, newly born politician — before taking on the role of a lifetime. Mr. Stone obviously doesn’t think the role fits, though he goes easier on Mr. Bush on screen than some of his off-screen remarks suggest. In a recent televised schmooze session with Larry King, Mr. Stone characterized the real 40-year-old Mr. Bush as “a bum.” But the movie shows him more as a boozing womanizer, a spoiled son of power and privilege — James Cromwell plays George H. W. Bush, and Ellen Burstyn does a comically mean Barbara Bush — who, swaddled in privilege and hurting for love (a familiar Stone fixation), doesn’t stick with a single book, job or woman.

That all changes with Jesus Christ and a little lady named Laura (Elizabeth Banks), twinned epiphanies who steer him down the path of righteousness and over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Continue reading the main story Mr. Brolin eases through these transitions effortlessly, but it’s a necessarily incomplete performance because, like all the major White House Players, his character looms too large in our lives for him to fully possess. It can be disconcerting when actors play historical figures, and it’s infinitely stranger when those figures aren’t obscured by time. But it’s one thing to watch Paul Giamatti scowling about in a presidential wig, as he did in the recent HBO mini-series “John Adams.” It’s something entirely different to watch Mr. Brolin sloppily downing drinks in a pantomime of the current president’s younger self, a figure that doesn’t belong to history but to the present and, by extension, to us. Good as he is, he can’t touch the original. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “W.” isn’t as visually baroque as “JFK” (1991) and “Nixon” (1995), Mr.

Stone’s darker, more ambitious excursions into the American psyche and presidency, partly because, I think, he does not yet have enough aesthetic distance from his subject and partly because he seems keen to weigh in as more evenhanded than usual. But while he has tamped down his style, he retains a pleasingly fluid approach to narrative. The story repeatedly shifts between scenes of the younger Bush meandering through his life, and the older Bush navigating through the early stages of the Iraq war. This shuttling across time and space undercuts the drama — the story doesn’t so much build as restlessly circle back — but it puts into visual terms Mr. Stone’s ideas about the present and past being mutually implicated. That’s fine, often better than fine, though it’s hard not to wish that Mr. Stone had put history into more dynamic play with politics and ideology and given the Big Daddy Bush thing a bit of a rest. Mr. Cromwell does a nice job imitating a block of wood, but there are only so many ways to voice patrician displeasure.

Because the film spends so much time on the pre-presidential younger Bush — first glimpsed marinating in vodka in 1966 — and ends sometime in 2004, more than a year into Iraq, it can’t help feeling like a prologue to a more involved story. At a compressed 129 minutes, it only gestures in some directions (Sept. 11), though Mr. Dreyfuss’s impersonation of Mr. Cheney pulling a Dr. Strangelove speaks volumes, encyclopedias. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Because “W.” focuses on the warm-up and not the meltdown, it leans more toward comedy than toward tragedy, a crucial exception being the graphic images of wounded and dead Iraqis and American soldiers that Mr. Stone drops late into the film and that stuff the laughs right back down your throat. This may be a comedy of errors, Mr. Stone seems to be saying, but it’s a murderously costly one.

The intrusion of real horror is bluntly effective, though there is something at once morally and structurally suspect about the use of such images in any fiction entertainment, no matter how high-minded and well intended. It’s not just that the dead can’t argue against their commercial exploitation, but Mr. Stone can’t get to where I think he’s trying to go — deep — without them. He does go deep at that moment, though I’m glad, wrung out by off-screen reality, that he doesn’t stay there long. In “W.” he doesn’t need to haul out the dead or excavate the depths to keep us hooked: he just needs to show Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton) tightly smiling while Bush rants; Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) flaunting his contempt for presidential power by savoring a piece of pie — Bush has given up sweets to show support for the troops — and Barbara Bush snapping her fingers at the family dog as if calling for its head. The pleasure of Mr. Stone’s work has never been located in restraint but in excess, a commitment to extremes that can drown out the world or, as in this film, give it newly vivid, hilarious and horrible form.

“W.” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The film has some extremely graphic images of real war and some expletives. W. Opens on Friday nationwide. Directed by Oliver Stone ; written by Stanley Weiser; director of photography, Phedon Papamichael; edited by Julie Monroe; music by Paul Cantelon; production designer, Derek Hill; produced by Bill Block, Eric Kopeloff, Paul Hanson and Moritz Borman; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. WITH: Josh Brolin ( George W. Bush ), Elizabeth Banks (Laura Bush), Ellen Burstyn (Barbara Bush), James Cromwell (George H. W. Bush), Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney), Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld), Toby Jones (Karl Rove), Stacy Keach (Earle Hudd), Bruce McGill (George Tenet), Thandie Newton (Condoleezza Rice) and Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell). W. W. (George Bush Biopic, 2008) Movie Images Gallery | BeyondHollywood.com W.

(George Bush Biopic, 2008) Movie Images Gallery 20 July 2008 — by Nix | W (George Bush Biopic, 2008) Movie W. (George Bush Biopic, 2008) Movie Images Gallery Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone presents the life and times of George W. Bush, the current President of the United States, as played by Josh Brolin. Stone has promised a fair movie on the sitting President. Elizabeth Banks plays Laura Bush, and Richard Dreyfuss is Vice President Dick Cheny. Starring: Elizabeth Banks, Josh Brolin, Thandie Newton, Richard Dreyfuss, Jesse Bradford, Ioan Gruffudd, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Scott Glenn, Noah Wyle, Jason Ritter, Jeffrey Wright, Rob Corddry Directed by: Oliver Stone Oliver Stone's ''W.'' is a peculiarly American and provocative tale - The Boston Globe | Text size – + Is there an easier target than a lame duck? "W.," the first biopic ever made about a sitting US president, is either two years too late or 15 too early. George W.

Bush hardly seems to matter anymore; attention has shifted to the two men who are vying to clean up the mess his administration has left behind. As it should. Who needs more Dubya taunting when there's work to be done? The irony is that Oliver Stone is aiming for something rather different here, and the results still feel tentative. For his third "president" film (the others being "JFK" and the much-underrated "Nixon"), the lightning-rod director casts the life of the 43d commander in chief as a peculiarly American tragedy: The story of a child of privilege who's also the family screw-up, whose aching need to prove himself to his father delivers his country into the hands of ambitious and predatory men. Or, as the woman behind me said as the end-credits rolled, "I . . . I felt sorry for him." Her confusion will be shared by many - partisans of the left will never extend compassion to George W. Bush and those on the right don't want this kind of sympathy - but it's a novel approach, and when it works, "W." can take your breath away. When it doesn't, you can feel Stone still working out his feelings toward the man.

There's a lot of Charles Foster Kane in "W.," and some of Shakespeare's Richard II. There's also more than a little Oliver Stone. Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men") plays the president, and it's an honorable performance, wholly lacking in cheap shots. (The soundtrack full of tinny pomp-and-circumstance tunes picks up that slack.) This Dubya is simple rather than simple-minded, a good old boy who acts first and thinks later, if at all. He's a decent sort, spoiled but likably cocky, and his biggest flaw is that he doesn't have the skills to articulate what's eating his insides out. That would be his father, George H.W. Bush, played by James Cromwell ("L.A. Confidential") as a patient but peremptory blueblood king. Dubya knows he'll never measure up to Poppy's standards - so does Poppy and so do we; anyway, brother Jeb (Jason Ritter) has been anointed heir apparent - and the frustration turns him to drink, rebellion, God, and politics, in that order.

"W." unfolds in two collage-like narrative streams: The series of White House meetings in 2003 leading up to the Iraq war and flashbacks to the many stages of George W. Bush's past. The former are where Stone pulls out the stops, and they are marvelously comic works of pseudo-history, cobbled together from the published memoirs of those who were there. The casting here is downright fiendish: Scott Glenn as a fatuously double-talking Donald Rumsfeld ("The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, Mr. President"); Bruce McGill as a phlegmatic George Tenet; comedian Rob Corddry as press secretary Ari Fleischer; Toby Jones (the other Capote) as a munchkin Karl Rove; Dennis Boutsikaris, a schlumpy Paul Wolfowitz. Thandie Newton's Condoleezza Rice is the closest the movie comes to "Saturday Night Live" caricature, but it's a cruelly brilliant cartoon nonetheless, a symphony of awkward postures and nasal speech patterns. Two of the president's men stand out: Secretary of State Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) and Vice President Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss).

The latter is a gray eminence on the sidelines until he has his Dr. Strangelove moment in front of a map of the oil fields of the Middle East, uttering the chilling (and wholly unsourced) words, "There is no exit strategy. We stay." Wright's Powell, forever counseling caution, gets the dialogue that's the heart of the 2003 scenes, though. "Why?," he asks. "Why Iraq? Why now?" Stone provides the answer in the flashback scenes, as George the son spends years twisting in the patrician scorn of George the father. Cromwell's Poppy isn't a thunderer - Barbara Bush (a live-wire Ellen Burstyn) is the emotional bad cop of the family - but his measured, diplomatic distance is, if anything, harder to live up to. "W." says W. would do anything to gain this man's respect, and after Saddam Hussein and the 1992 election humble the elder Bush, the prodigal son spends years planning his revenge. The tragedy, as Stone sees it (and he's hardly alone), is that the country and the world are still paying for our president's daddy issues. Cheapjack Freudianism? Arrant fantasy?

Certainly. Provocative and rudely entertaining? More than you'd think. Because "W." wants us to understand the man, though, Stone pulls his punches in ways that don't always work. I appreciate the movie's non-hysterical treatment of Bush's religious conversion - out of nowhere, Stone pulls Stacy Keach to play a composite reverend figure, and the aging lion is unexpectedly touching - and Elizabeth Banks's gentle Laura Bush softens both the movie and its protagonist. Yet the operatic tendencies that are Stone's strength and weakness as a filmmaker are muzzled here, and it may be that this psychodrama hits too close to home for a filmmaker known for his own struggles against a larger-than-life father. Late in the film, there's a dream sequence in which Bush Sr. lets his wayward son have it right between the eyes, right in the Oval Office. It's a striking moment, but it doesn't carry the devastating impact - the Olympian fury toward one man's betrayal of family and nation - that it aims for. Stone's pity for his subject ennobles the film and hobbles it at the same time. "W." shudders to a halt a few scenes later, its anger unresolved.

Leaving the theater, you may have the sudden sense that, really, it is too early for this movie to have been made, as sharp and as complicated as some of its pieces are. Historical perspective takes years. So does therapy. You be the judge of which we'll be needing more. Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com . For more on movies, go to . © Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company. "W" - The Films of Oliver Stone - Pictures - CBS News The Films of Oliver Stone Next The Films of Oliver Stone The movies of the American director Oliver Stone in many ways mirror the travails and transformation of a generation - studies in violence, hubris, greed, celebrity worship, and the power of media. Credit: Orion Pictures Born in New York City in 1946, Stone was raised in an affluent home (his father was a stockbroker) and attended Yale. He served in Vietnam and came home a decorated combat veteran, and a man who was, he says, forever changed. "How do you come back from the war? If you come back stone dead inside or do you come back with a heart still? That was the hardest thing for me.

It was not fighting the enemy, although they were significant. But it was to try to keep your own humanity alive inside you. Believe me, that war is a curse, because it scars people for life." He overcame it, he told Katie Couric, through art. "I made three movies about it. So, I was able to exorcise some of these devils." Credit: Cinema Libre Director Oliver Stone on location filming "Platoon." Credit: Orion Pictures "Midnight Express" Stone won his first Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of Billy Hayes' book about his experience as an American imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. The harrowing 1978 film starred Brad Davis and was directed by Alan Parker. Credit: Columbia Pictures "The Hand" One of Stone's first directorial efforts, this 1981 horror film stars Michael Caine as a comic artist who loses an appendage in a gruesome accident. But as the ads promise, "It lives. It crawls. And suddenly, it kills"  including Stone himself, who appears in a cameo as a vagrant who sadly encounters The Hand.

It fared better than his debut feature, 1974's "Seizure," a horror flick that starred cult icons Martine Beswick and Jonathan Frid ("Dark Shadows"). Credit: Orion Pictures "Scarface" Following "Midnight Express," Stone worked on several screenplays for other directors. He shared credit with John Milius for "Conan the Barbarian" and worked on the adaptations of "8 Million Ways to Die" and the musical "Evita." His most memorable writing assignment was the update of "Scarface" (1983), starring Al Pacino and directed by Brian De Palma, even if much of this highly-quoted film's dialogue is unprintable here. Credit: Universal "Year of the Dragon" Stone co-wrote with director Michael Cimino the screenplay for the 1985 gang war drama "Year of the Dragon." Credit: DEG "Salvador" James Woods gave a career-defining performance as a photojournalist chronicling a Latin American dictatorship in "Salvador" (1986).

Credit: Hemdale "Platoon" With its depiction of heroism and honor struggling to rise above the madness of war, Stone's "Platoon" (1986) became a cathartic experience for many Vietnam vets, who were often portrayed in Hollywood and TV dramas as mentally unbalanced, vengeful and violent characters. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards , it won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Credit: Orion Pictures "Wall Street" The lure of money and power was tantalizingly dramatized in this 1987 tale of a young man (Charlie Sheen) tempted by wealth's corrupting influences. He goes toe-to-toe with financier Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), who proceeds to walk all over him. Gekko memorably defined a decade of excess by exclaiming, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Credit: 20th Century Fox "Wall Street" Of "Wall Street," Stone told Katie Couric, "We were the first.

People had never thought about money as a subject for a movie. And I think we caught a flare of that 1980s period, that consumerism, Ronald Reagan prosperity, so to speak." Credit: 20th Century Fox "Born on the Fourth of July" After filming the Eric Bogosian play "Talk Radio," Stone directed "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic, a young American paralyzed from wounds suffered in Vietnam who became an outspoken anti-war protester. The film featured Tom Cruise's best performance. Credit: Universal Pictures "Born on the Fourth of July" The film earned Stone his second Best Director Academy Award. Credit: Universal Pictures "The Doors" Stone returned to the Sixties with "The Doors" (1991), about the revolutionary rock band fronted by Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer). Credit: Tristar Pictures "JFK" No other film of Stone's solidified in the public's mind an image of the filmmaker as did his 1991 story examining the fallout from the assassination of President Kennedy.

"JFK" took New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) on a hyper-kinetic journey into a labyrinth of politics , espionage, dirty tricks and lost innocence, in which a patriotic, conservative law enforcement official begins to doubt his faith in his government - but not the law. The film was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 2, for its bravura cinematography and editing. Credit: Warner Brothers "Heaven & Earth" The third of Stone's trilogy of films on Vietnam, "Heaven & Earth" (1993) tells the true story of the hardships of a Vietnamese woman (Hiep Thi Le) during and after the war. Le Ly Hayslip co-authored two books: "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places" and "Child of War, Woman of Peace." Credit: Warner Brothers "Natural Born Killers" Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are lovers and serial murderers in "Natural Born Killers" (1994), written by Stone, David Veloz and Richard Rutowski, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino.

Credit: Warner Brothers "Nixon" The 1995 biopic "Nixon" calls itself "an attempt to understand the truth." Just prior to its release, the family of the late president issued a statement calling parts of the movie "reprehensible," and accusing the filmmakers of seeking to solely and maliciously "defame and degrade President and Mrs. Nixon's memories in the mind of the American public." Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen portrayed the first couple. Credit: Hollywood Pictures "U Turn" Jennifer Lopez played the gun-wielding femme fatale in "U Turn" (1997), opposite Sean Penn and Nick Nolte. Credit: Tristar Pictures "Any Given Sunday" Al Pacino (pictured with Jamie Foxx and Dennis Quaid) plays the coach of a Miami NFL team struggling with professional and personal challenges in "Any Given Sunday" (1999). Credit: Warner Bros. "Alexander" Colin Farrell starred as Alexander the Great in Stone's 2004 military epic. The cast also included Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer and Anthony Hopkins.

Credit: Warner Brothers "World Trade Center" Stone addressed the mammoth scale of the 9/11 attacks with a more confined 2006 film about the struggles of rescue workers at the ruins of the World Trade Center and of two police officers trapped in the rubble. Credit: Paramount Pictures "W" Given Stone's liberal proclivities, audiences assumed his 2008 film on George W. Bush would be a scathing indictment. But Stone told Daily Variety, "I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" Stone told Katie Couric, "As much as I may detest his policies, I tried to make him human. And some people criticized me and they said it was too sympathetic to Bush. I thought it was empathetic, [which] is a big difference to me." Credit: Lionsgate "South of the Border" In Stone's 2010 documentary "South of the Border," the director engages in dialogues with several Latin American leaders, including Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, to discuss political and social movements as they are evolving in reaction to (or in spite of) North American influence.

Credit: Cinema Libre "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" Stone returned to the blood sport of finance with his 2010 sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." Michael Douglas revives his role as Gordon Gekko, now out of prison and ready to square off against Josh Brolin and Shia LaBeouf. Credit: 20th Century Fox "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" Stone had hesitated doing a sequel to one of his most popular films ("You can never go back in time, set foot in the same river twice, you know?"). But more than two decades after the first "Wall Street," the excesses of the financial world still seem timely. He told Kate Couric the bubble of the 1980s is a recurring phenomenon: "We've seen bubbles all my life. In 2000 you saw the bubble with the Internet, and then you saw another bubble with real estate. I've seen four bubbles, big bubbles now. I think to a certain degree, we are a bubbled economy.

What the next bubble is, we'll see." Credit: 20th Century Fox "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" Stone pictured on the set with Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan. Of his latest film Stone says, "I make stories. And it's a great story about these six people in this shark world of New York City in that 2008 period. It has love and trust, betrayal, greed, all those juicy issues that make a movie work well. [The characters] all screw each other in some point in the movie, and they all kind of  it's what life is about to me." Credit: 20th Century Fox "Savages" John Travolta star in "Savages," directed by Oliver Stone and based on the novel by Don Winslow about American marijuana growers waging war with a Mexican drug cartel. In addition to Travolta, the cast includes Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch and Demian Bichir. By CBSNews.com producer David Morgan Credit: Universal Pictures

Question: In the 2008 film 'W, directed by Oliver Stone, who played George W. Bush?
Answer: JOSH BROLIN